Polls Force Biden to Flip His Position on Law and Order [OPINION]

During the 2020 Democratic National Convention, not a word was mentioned by any of the speakers about the nationwide marches and riots resulting from the incident in May regarding police brutality of a Black man in Minneapolis. George Floyd, who was filmed as he laid on the ground, forced there by police, ended up dying while a police officer drove his knee into his neck for just under nine minutes.

The entire nation watched the video, most of us with great difficulty as we witnessed him insisting that he was unable to breathe and was understandably frightened as a result of it.

Bystanders filming the event were heard begging for the officer, Derek Chauvin – who has since been fired and is awaiting a murder trial – and three other policemen to relent from the submission hold on Floyd. Their pleas went unanswered, despite Floyd already having lost consciousness and perhaps life itself, all for the world to witness on social media and then on professional news broadcasts.

The Black community instantly rose up and mobilized and they were far from alone. People of all races were unified in ending the endless examples of police brutality against Black Americans. The Black Lives Matter organization led the way with coordinated marches, mostly peaceful.

Mostly.

I just read that a survey suggests that better than 95 percent of the protests were peaceful. Okay, I can buy that. I've been to two different BLM marches, one in Boston in 2015 and another in 2020 in New Bedford, and both were indeed peaceful protests. I saw a respectful, polite group of marchers who were predominantly Black college-age kids.

But to ignore the sizable violence and chaos in the riots which resulted from the presence of the BLM protests is a strange, if not suspicious, position to take for most Americans.

The Democrats were handed a straight grounder and instead are left with an unforced error after the closing of the convention. Neither Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, or any of the many speakers over the four days addressed the violence, the looting of businesses large and small, the arson, the assault on police, the assault on random people caught in the sudden rampages, vandalism, trespassing, or other acts of chaos.

The Democratic brain trust decided to pretend none of the disturbing events were happening. In fact, it seems like they somehow knew (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) the network news outlets and major newspapers would also coincidently ignore the rampages.

The Republican National Convention which followed the next week took a different route. While showcasing minorities with positive outlooks for our imperfect nation, much of the discussion was about the abandonment of law and order in the locations of the riots.

It seems that the RNC had taken the Democrats by surprise by using the (accurate) narrative of pointing out that the locations of the riots are all in cities and states with liberal, Democratic elected leaders who have failed to protect their cities, the businesses, and even people's homes.

No longer the only way for people to get their news, the liberal mainstream media minimized coverage of the riots in Seattle, Portland, Detroit, New York, Atlanta, Denver, Aurora, and elsewhere until they realized their downplaying of the riots was in vain.

Americans were well aware of the nightly sustained violence. People simply holding cell phone cameras have proven to make far better journalists than the professional media that didn't turn theirs on.

It is now a joke for the tens of millions to see a city being burned in the background while CNN's reporters talk of the "peaceful" protests around them.

The peaceful protests we can support. We do support. The rioters and the demands which have evolved from ending the disparity in police brutality between the races, and have now included reparations, destroying and re-writing the history of the United States, has lost much of the support recently offered by many, many Americans.

The political result? Most polls are showing a collapse of Biden's once comfortable lead over President Trump to a freefall just outside of the margin of error, and in a very short time.

With just 55 days remaining until Election Day on November 3, the Biden campaign is left scrambling.

It is clear that Americans want an end to the senseless violence targeted toward police but now against white citizens and Black citizens who confront the rioters. The violence is escalating as several well-documented, riot-related shootings have taken place across the country.

Now Biden is mimicking Trump, suggesting that he and only he can make it all right again.

But Joe, it wasn't on any one of the long lists of things you promised to do once in office at your own speech accepting your party's nomination, with your largest ever captive audience.

It is quite obvious to a lot of us, Joe, that you are only now showing concern for what Antifa and BLM rioters are doing to our country because the polls dictate that you must show concern.

According to the NBC/Marist poll, Trump has completely closed the gap in Florida. He has closed to within striking range in key states Michigan and Pennsylvania, and this is before the video showing BLM marchers flipping meals and tables over on elderly white diners in Pittsburgh last weekend, something the president admitted to watching and to finding disturbing.

Biden has put himself in a precarious situation, something he has painfully done many times over in his past. He now has to balance the earned devotion of the far left while simultaneously parroting Trump's tough talk on the rioters.

Biden is even beginning to talk along the lines of "America first" with recent speeches about buying American-made goods before those made overseas.

As he comes out of the pandemic bunker more, it seems Biden realizes that his platform is looking weaker than Trump's to too many, as the nation is looking for strength in a government which has been under attack since May by far-left anarchists like Antifa, using the BLM ranks from which to lash out nightly on America's TVs.

The former vice president recently asked a rhetorical question in one of his online basement speeches: "Do I look like a radical socialist with a soft spot for rioters?"

What does a radical rioting socialist look like to you, Mr. Biden? Are you profiling? Are you saying you are white, so you can't be one?

Of course, this line of questioning would have already been printed and aired if Trump had the stupidity to ask the same question, but, to answer it, it's your vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris that is bailing rioters out of jail.

So, yeah, you do look like if you aren't one yourself, you're a sympathizer or perhaps a collaborator with the radical socialists (or, more accurately, anarchists) who are rioting.

In fact, recently if you wanted to give to the Campaign to Elect Joe Biden, you only had to go to Antifa.com.

While the mainstream media is happy to explain away a lack of any connection between the two, and while they may be behind Joe Biden 100 percent over Trump, it's just not a good look to have a violent group of anarchists like Antifa who are destroying property and hurting people also openly steering money toward your campaign.

Ken Pittman is the host of The Ken Pittman Show on 1420 WBSM New Bedford. He can be heard Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon. Contact him at ken.pittman@townsquaremedia.com. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author.